


Winsome

by tolstayas



Category: The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
Genre: M/M, sometimes u just gotta take ur school reading and make it gay, technically this is educational
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-01-15 01:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18488113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolstayas/pseuds/tolstayas
Summary: "Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine..."Two of these three dark prophecies seem to have come true, sooner or later. Why not another?





	1. An Affectation, Of Course (But Perhaps Something More)

Tony wouldn't remember, but the watches were never his symbol. They were the symbol of something Tony could never know about, something that could not be named - that could not be alluded to - that could not even be symbolised.

 

Still, he wasn't all wrong about it. They had all had their fascinations, back then, and Tony had been fascinated by time, by what he called its "malleability"; he took to the idea of the watches immediately, going through all the philosophical reasoning necessary to justify something that was, at its core, unspeakable, unjustifiable. He used to say it was about "private time", "secret time". In some sense he was right about that, though he never knew it: it was all about secrets, if not really very much about time.

 

Sure, the two of them - Alex and Colin, that is - had thought of telling him, especially before Adrian, when he was the only person they could tell. Before Adrian, yes, because Adrian marked the beginning of a new era - imperceptible, but obvious in hindsight. They wanted to tell him; they almost did. But they could never be sure; they were not even sure of themselves, and how can you trust anyone with something so fragile? They loved his bitter, righteous anger against the powers that be, but he was quick to judge, and hard to persuade once he had made up his opinion. He was always ready to accuse oppressors, but didn't find it necessary to sympathise with their victims. Whatever would he make of them?

 

They never told anyone; it simply couldn't be done. It had taken so long, already, for them to tell each other. And longer still for them to tell it to themselves, without flinching.

 

When had Alex realized?

 

A year or so before it happened. Not at any precise moment, on any precise day; but the things had begun to pile up and became difficult to ignore, and eventually something had to come crashing down.

 

Yes, the things piled up, the things being: the miserable way he felt when Colin was out sick; the way his gaze couldn’t help but slip down to Colin’s lips when he talked; that he only wanted to go anywhere if he knew Colin would be there, and couldn’t stand anyone else; the way he found himself staring during sports until his team cursed him for his distraction; the way his breath caught in his throat whenever, accidentally, they touched.

 

The things piled up and it became impossible not to understand. However much he didn’t want to know, the things demanded to be known, demanded to be felt - deeply and excruciatingly. The way he had always felt things.

 

For a long time it was his great shame. And then it happened, and it became his great joy, and his even greater secret.

 

And Colin?

 

Colin hadn’t ever really realized until it was too late not to. He had been wrapped up in his novels, in the boldness of feeling and the wretchedness of existence. Reading the Romantics had convinced him that the slightest thing could and _should_ always be felt to the extreme, that the very fact of his existence was what swung him restlessly from euphoria to despair and back again. He observed himself reflectively, the way a tormented hero might, and decided that he attached himself to others compulsively, out of a deep well of primordial loneliness; and that he was shaken by passions out of a natural sensitivity to the chaos of the universe.

 

He hadn’t even noticed that he had fallen in love.

 

And then he did, and the two of them found the strength in each other to say and do unspeakable things, things they were told were shameful. And they found answers.

 

“I should go home,” Alex had half-whispered that day. They were sitting too close. Their arms were touching. Centuries ago, it seemed, Colin had asked him who he fancied. He had gone all red and muttered “no one”, unconvincingly. Aeons before that, he had accidentally nodded when Colin asked him if he knew what it felt like to be in love. Since then there had been silence, they were alone. “It’s late.”

 

And he showed Colin the time, glinting on his wrist.

 

Colin was much more impulsive than Alex ever had been. He had looked up at Alex, and felt something in his chest like the sound it makes when a sheet of paper is torn in two. And so he took hold of Alex’s watch and turned it around, so it faced the inside of his wrist, and said, “Not yet.”

 

Alex had looked up at him, surprised and nearly breathless.

 

Colin was really much more impulsive than he was.

 

It was only when Alex broke away from the kiss, eyes wide and dark, that they realized the full force of what they had done. They couldn’t summon up anything to say, at least for a second; they could only stare. Not knowing what to think. Afraid they were dreaming. Afraid they weren’t.

 

“I don’t know why I did that,” Colin said, finally. “I guess I just…”

 

And that was when Alex finally gathered the courage to kiss him back.

 

When he left, Alex’s watch was still facing backwards. The next day he wore it to school that way, hoping Colin would notice and acknowledge it somehow, terrified that he would pretend to have forgotten everything. Colin did notice. As a sign of recognition, he turned his own watch around; Alex’s heart leapt when he saw it.

 

Tony, who was more concerned with appearances than with meaning, adopted the gesture himself straight away, fearing he was being silently excluded from some sort of secret pact. Alex and Colin laughed about it, sometimes, between themselves.

 

Tony made it his own, gave it his own meaning, as he did to everything. But he never got it.

 

Only the two of them ever could.


	2. It Took Us A While (To Work This Out)

What about Adrian? Adrian was another story entirely.

 

Of course there was turbulence. Something as delicate as what they had at the time was bound to falter in the face of change.

 

What had changed? There were three of them, two and one. And now there were four, but not quite two and two. More like one and two and one. In that order.

 

It was like this: Alex would be talking to Adrian about the perceived nature of reality and Colin would hardly look at him for the rest of the day. Colin and Adrian would be discussing some historical figure or another and Alex would walk away and wait, fuming, in the washroom for half an hour.

 

It was immediately clear to both of them that Adrian was something else. They became madly jealous, and stubbornly defensive. Though of course what they wanted was never quite him; rather, some exalted image of him they wished they could find in their own features. Alex saw in him the philosopher, the logician. Colin saw the tragic, lone hero, too noble for the world. And they yearned.

 

They never really argued about it, per se. Impossible to confront the other over a crime they had both committed: “You’re obsessed with him.” “Aren’t you?” “You’d do anything to impress him.” “You’re one to talk…” And so on. Impossible to bring up, impossible to ignore.

 

Neither Tony nor Adrian, or course, noticed anything.

 

They stopped seeing each other - alone, that is - for a month or two. Cold months. October, November. But it couldn’t last.

 

The note Alex passed to Colin in English class on the first Friday of December read, “Saturday?”

 

Colin glanced over at him. Alex looked sheepish, apologetic; Colin nodded solemnly.

 

By the time Colin had stuffed the note in his pencil case it was too late; he had been caught. Phil Dixon was already striding towards him, hand outstretched. Colin was silently grateful for the timid, mathematical way Alex had of saying the bare minimum whenever he could get away with it. Thank God the note hadn’t contained anything more compromising.

 

“Saturday,” read Dixon, and shrugged. “Indeed. I’d rather not try to imagine what you two are planning for the weekend.” There was a low murmur of laughter. Colin and Alex both went bright red; luckily no one seemed to catch on.

 

“What _are_ you planning for Saturday?” Tony, after class. Of course.

 

“Nothing,” Colin muttered. “My parents need me.” His eye-roll hardly made it any more convincing, but Tony seemed to buy it.

 

“I’ve actually got, uh, work to do,” Alex said, with if anything less conviction than Colin. "I'd forgotten until just now." Tony didn’t pursue that, either.

 

So: Saturday it was.

 

A quiet day. When Alex arrived Colin barely muttered a greeting. They went up to his room and stood there, shuffling their feet awkwardly.

 

“Who talks first?” Colin asked, and it might have been a challenge, but his tone was soft.

 

“Um.” Alex looked down at his hands. “Could you start?”

 

Colin nodded. “Yeah.” Looked around the room for a second. “Yeah, I can. I’m sorry.”

 

Alex looked up. “No, it’s my fault.”

 

“It’s both of us.”

 

“Yeah, I guess it is. Even though that’s what everyone says.” Alex smiled a little.

 

“You’re not taking the piss, though.”

 

“No,” he said, and he wasn’t. And then: “I’m sorry.”

 

“I’m not either. Taking the piss, I mean.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I just thought I should say it.”

 

 _Being serious._ That’s what he was doing, for once, Colin knew. Perhaps he had learned something of value from Adrian after all.

 

Alex thought of Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein. He thought of the imperfection of human communication. He thought about how they both thought they knew exactly what the other was talking about, but could they ever really be sure? And then he thought about how maybe just this - just saying what you meant to say - maybe just this was enough.

 

From then on they set down rules. Unwritten ones, of course; any evidence could ruin them. That was a part of it. They were not to speak of what was between them, not to anyone. They were not to write about it, not even in the most private of journals. They were not to show signs in public, beyond the watches. These rules protected them.

 

But there were other rules, too. They were not to seek out girlfriends. They were to write to each other every week when they left home, after school ended and life began. They were not to keep secrets, unless circumstances required it.

 

This second set of rules was the subject of much deeper discussion than the first. It could seem authoritarian, on the surface; but it was subtler than that. It reflected the way, that day in Colin’s bedroom, the two of them had come to understand whatever it was they felt for each other - Alex being still much more hesitant than Colin to call it Love.

 

And so on and so forth. Until, of course, their lives began.


	3. So Their Hints Implied (But Then, No One Told The Whole Truth)

_Tuesday, the 17th of September, 1968._

 

_Dear Colin,_

 

_I am bored out of my fucking mind._

 

_My father is as insufferable a philistine as ever. I can't imagine anything more lifeless and parasitic than a business like his, and the thought of taking after him is a vision of darkness. Me, a marine insurance broker. I'd rather blow my brains out.  
_

 

_Anyway, I read a poem today and thought of you._

 

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you,

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

 

_And what about university? I hope it's not too disappointing - if not as mysterious and exciting as we hoped it would be, hungry idealists that we were, it must at least be interesting. Tell me about what you're reading. I must give myself the illusion of intellectual stimulation or I might hang myself._

 

_Tony wrote me today and asked if I had a girlfriend yet. Has he asked you the same? I’m so bored I have decided to lie to him, just to mess with his head. What shall I call her, my new girlfriend? Colette would be too obvious. Perhapts Caroline? My father’s secretary, older than myself… Dark hair, dark eyes, you know the drill._

 

_I’m already imagining our inevitable split-up. I’m sure she looks lovely when she cries, as all good heroines must. If I don’t find anything better to do very soon I am at risk of writing a novel about her. I’ll mail it to Tony in installments, a chapter for every time he asks about my love life. What do you think? Of course it will be very racy. But in a tasteful way._

 

_The look on his face when he reads it… ! It’s a crying shame I won’t be there to see it._

 

_If you haven’t already told him anything to the contrary, write him to say you’ve met a certain Alexandra from your classics seminar… Or an Alice perhaps. Make her a philosophy student._

 

_Is it horrible of me? Sure. But I can’t resist a little entertainment. I hope you’ll humour me. It would be so funny._

 

_That’s all for the moment. Write to me often, I beg you._

 

_Yours,_

_Alex_

 

* * *

 

_Friday, the 20th of September, 1968._

 

_Dearest Alex,_

 

_I wish that I were with you, or rather, that you could be with me, and not in that hell-hole of an office. Sussex is charming, you know, the way a provincial cottage is charming. The lectures are brilliant, but the best is the library. Have you read any Verlaine? Or Rimbaud? You should. They were like us - you know what I mean._

 

_Poor Tony! I’ve written to him, waxing poetic about the charms of Alexandra’s almond eyes. He’ll never know the whole portrait is copied straight out of a French novel. O her face, o her hair… I’ve missed being horrible with you, you wonderful bastard! I have made friends here, but it’s lonely all the same. I miss my partner in crime. I never thought I'd say I missed our old school days, at least not until I turned fully forty-five, but here we are._

 

_Alex, there are things that I cannot say to you in this letter, and I need to say them. If I had a mind for mathematics like you do I would write them in code. For now I can only quote Whitman back to you - he knew what it was all about, didn’t he?_

 

O I have been dilatory and dumb,

I should have made my way straight to you long ago, 

I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

 

_When I saw the lines you’d copied I - well, I don’t need to tell you how I felt, do I? You knew what you were doing, and it worked. I know you’re not usually one for verse or sentimentality, and if you’re doing it on purpose to please me, then by God, don’t stop._

 

_I just hope you’ll understand that without you - well, absence has done precisely what the proverb dictates that it should. And it aches like anything._

 

_Sometimes when I’m walking through a doorway or down a hall I suddenly smell something that reminds me of you. I can’t say what it is. My heart seizes up every time._

 

_Is this too risqué? You can burn it if you think it’s best that way. I couldn’t not write it._

 

_Before I embarrass myself any more - I am, as I always have been_

 

_Your Colin._

 

_P. S. If you do decide to write a racy novel, make sure to type up a copy for me. I can’t imagine a better use for the typewriter I’m sure your father has you sitting behind all day long. (Courage!)  
_


End file.
